1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the selling of home furnishings and the like items. Some preferred embodiments provide improved systems and methods for selling home furnishings and the like items via a mobile vehicle. The preferred embodiments can advantageously be used to sell various items, and especially, home furnishings, such as, e.g., furniture items, such as by way of example, beds, mattresses, box springs, bed frames, other bed components, sofas, sleeper sofas, chairs, tables and/or other furniture items.
2. Discussion of the Background
In contrast to many consumer products, home furnishings, such as, e.g., furniture items, are not amenable to mobile sales. Among other things, furniture items are typically rather large. In addition, furniture items are typically selected to suit a variety of consumer needs, such as, e.g., physical needs (e.g., ergonomic needs) and aesthetic needs (e.g., subjective needs). As a result, consumers of furniture items typically need to carefully test a substantial number of furniture items before making a purchase. Due to, among other things, this common need to test a substantial quantity of items, which items are already rather large items, furniture items have not been amenable to mobile sales.
This lack of amenability to mobile sales has a variety of drawbacks. Among other things, because consumers typically must travel to a site of a furniture store, such required travel can be difficult, especially for consumers having travel difficulties, such as, e.g., elderly consumers, handicapped consumers, vehicleless consumers and/or the like. To make matters worse, in view of the large inventories needed and the large item sizes, furniture stores are often at more remote locations, such as, e.g., at geographical locations where commercial property is less expensive (i.e., to enable display of sufficient furniture items without undue expenses). Thus, to purchase furniture items, consumers often must travel even further than they otherwise may need to travel for non-furniture items.
In addition, the substantial amount of inventory space required in consumer furniture retail stores can be rather expensive. These expenses are, understandably, passed on to the consumers via increased costs for furniture items. Thus, furniture items are often not only more difficult to purchase than some other types of items, but they are often more inflated in price than some other types of items. Additionally, even if a consumer travels all the way to a furniture store and pays an inflated price due to inventory costs, often the consumer cannot even take the product home with him due to the large size of the furniture item. Often, the consumer must then pay an additional shipping fee to have the item delivered at a later date.
While a variety of mobile sales systems and methods have been known, prior to the present invention, there was a substantial need (although this need was not known or appreciated to those in the art) for mobile sales systems and methods for the sale of furniture and the like items. The present invention provides substantial advances over the rather limited existing systems and methods, such as, e.g., that described in the following patents: (1) U.S. Pat. No. 6,585,305 entitled Mobile Showroom Advertising Vehicle (see, e.g., column 3, lines 36+ of the patent which admits that “[a] limitation of the mobile showroom 10 is that the interior space 16 available for the display of merchandise such as sofas, chairs, etc., is quite obviously limited, inasmuch as only a few samples of a couch or a chair or a lamp can be displayed at a time”); (2) U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,795 entitled Method for Mobile Sales and Vehicles Therefore (see, e.g., Abstract which explains that “the present invention relates to a method of selling merchandise, particularly clothing fashions and accessories, to customers at locations convenient to the customer”); (3) U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,899 entitled Mobile Display Pavilion (see, e.g., Abstract which explains that “[e]ach embodiment includes . . . a door or doors that swing down to a slanted position . . . for receiving and displaying merchandise”); (4) U.S. Pat. No. 5,310,209 entitled Vehicles for Transportation and Display of Articles of Merchandise (see, e.g., column 1, lines 62+ which explain that “[i]t is a prime object of the present invention to provide mobile article display vehicles which are maneuverable into closely defined spaces . . . ”); (5) U.S. Pat. No. 4,616,870 entitled Mobile Display System (see, e.g., Abstract which explains that the disclosure involves “[a] mobile system for carpet samples and the like which includes . . . a plurality of racks”); (6) U.S. Pat. No. 4,480,866 entitled Vehicle for Displaying Goods (see, e.g., Abstract which explains that the “vehicle for displaying goods comprises a main body having opposite side walls and a display subbody” that moves outward to increase internal room of the vehicle for display); (7) U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,938 entitled Mobile Showroom With Living Quarters; and (8) U.S. Pat. No. 4,019,773 entitled Mobile Carpet Display Center.
Prior to the present invention there has been a need in the art for improved systems and methods for selling furniture and/or the like.